Dr. Silvia DeGirolamo is a consulting psychologist, executive coach, and founder of Veraforma Advisory.

Her career has moved through healthcare, medical training and education, military medicine, Special Operations, assessment and selection, executive coaching, human performance, and organizational and program design.

The settings have been different, but the throughline has remained remarkably consistent: understanding what helps capable people lead well, work well together, and keep developing as responsibility, complexity, and demands increase.

Veraforma is the practice built around that work.

From healthcare systems to high-consequence environments

Early in her career, Silvia became interested in making psychology more accessible by translating research and clinical knowledge into practical approaches that could reach people where they received care, learned, and worked. In primary care and community health, she developed integrated healthcare programs, trained physicians and other healthcare professionals, and worked with colleagues to secure grant funding that helped build and sustain those efforts.

That work expanded into larger-scale systems design. At Fort Bragg, Silvia developed and led a multi-site integrated behavioral health consultation service across seven primary care clinics serving more than 220,000 beneficiaries, with responsibility for implementation, metrics, training, supervision, and integration into routine healthcare delivery.

For 18 years, Silvia supported active-duty military and Special Operations communities, with work spanning personnel assessment, assessment and selection, leader coaching, human-performance initiatives, and programs for people navigating consequential transitions. Across that work, she conducted more than 5,000 personnel assessments and coached leaders across all levels of responsibility.

In one organization, Silvia worked with leaders and training teams to strengthen assessment and evaluation practices, improve consistency among those responsible for evaluating performance, and make better use of performance information across multiple units. She also provided senior-leader coaching and consulted on the integration of psychology into training and operational support.

Her research-to-practice work has extended internationally through contributions to NATO guidance on mental performance in Special Operations and two co-authored chapters in the Handbook of Mental Performance: Lessons from High Performance Domains, focused on learning environments and program evaluation.

Across those settings, the value of experience is not assuming one environment should copy another. It is recognizing useful patterns, understanding what may transfer, and adapting the evidence to the people, culture, and realities already inside the organization.

Built on Purpose

I built Veraforma because I wanted the work to start with what an organization actually needs, not with a fixed program that happens to be available.

The work is structured and evidence-informed, but the application should fit the people, roles, culture, and operating environment it is meant to serve.

Built on Purpose is a simple idea: leaders, teams, and the systems around them should be developed deliberately. Not left to chance. Not assembled from disconnected pieces simply because that is how things have always been done.

It also reflects something that has followed me throughout my career: evidence has the greatest value when it becomes something people can actually use.

That principle shapes how Veraforma works.

The Veraforma Approach

Start with what is already strong.

Organizations usually know a great deal about what is working and where things are harder than they should be. The work begins there, building from existing strengths rather than assuming everything needs to be replaced.

Understand before moving to solutions.

Veraforma does not arrive with a boxed answer. The first job is to understand the people, the work, the environment, and the question the organization is actually trying to solve.

Ground the work in evidence.

Research, assessment, and metrics help inform the work and support better decisions. Veraforma uses them in practical ways that fit the situation and the organization.

Work alongside the people who know the job.

An outside perspective can be useful. So is the expertise already inside the organization. Veraforma works in partnership with the people closest to the work rather than treating outside expertise as a substitute for theirs.

Make it usable.

A good framework is not enough. The work needs to translate into behaviors, conversations, decisions, and practices people can actually use where they work.

Selected Credentials

Silvia DeGirolamo, Psy.D., MHA, PCC

• Licensed Psychologist
• Doctor of Psychology, Health and Forensic Psychology concentrations
• Master of Healthcare Administration
• Professional Certified Coach, International Coaching Federation
• Hogan Assessments Certified, including Advanced Interpretation
• EQ-i 2.0 / EQ 360 Certified
• Everything DiSC Certified Practitioner
• AQai Certified Practitioner, Level I

Research, Writing & Speaking

Silvia’s work includes translating research into practice through professional writing, technical guidance, and presentations for professional audiences.

Selected work includes NATO human-performance guidance and two chapters in the Handbook of Mental Performance, along with current writing and speaking on leadership, team performance, assessment and development, and the human side of high-consequence work.

Based in North Carolina. Working nationally.

Veraforma Advisory is based in North Carolina’s Research Triangle region and works with organizations nationally.